The Wide World of Disease-Based Dutch Profanity

Twanna Hines, who grew up in rural Illinois, moved to the Netherlands to pursue a graduate degree at the University of Amsterdam in 2000. Not totally used to the stream of bicycles and trams in the streets of Amsterdam, she wandered into a bike lane and got a mouthful from a passing cyclist. “And my Dutch roommate shouted back, in the Dutch translation, ‘Get cancer, man!’” she remembers. “And I was like, ‘What the hell? That doesn’t make any sense, why would you tell someone to get cancer?’” This was…

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